No More Massive Tomes of Rules

[Maggan]

I think you may be misremembering.

I think it is more likely that people have different experiences and that your style of gaming is not the only style of gaming. Is it so anethema to think that some people have played with a light focus on the rules they use ever since this hobby started?

No one is saying you can't enjoy 3000 pages of rules, people are just saying they aren't enjoying it as much.

 

[Celebrim]

Or subconsciously expect the result will be worse than the options they already have rules for.

Which, in the case of most GMs asked to smith a rule on the fly or make a ruling on the fly, is likely to be a rational and reasonable instinct. Because the instinct of most GMs asked to get out of their comfort zone is to either say no or say a more elaborate version of no that involves jumping through improbable hoops.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Which, in the case of most GMs asked to smith a rule on the fly or make a ruling on the fly, is likely to be a rational and reasonable instinct. Because the instinct of most GMs asked to get out of their comfort zone is to either say no or say a more elaborate version of no that involves jumping through improbable hoops.

Or, even if they aren't doing that, to make sure the option (that they're now passively setting as precedent) isn't so attractive it becomes the go-to, which often turns into making it completely unattractive.

 

[Swanosaurus]

What the rules are silent on, players will typically not attempt to do because they simply won't think about it or think it is possible. And what the rules are silent on, game masters will typically not design for because they simply won't think about it or if they do won't think of it as possible. So if you have 1e AD&D, you probably have a whole lot of combats that are in 30x40 foot rooms against a relatively static foe where you charge and lock in melee supported by ranged attacks. And like me you probably had a lot of fun doing it. What you probably didn't have was a lot of running chases on horseback, because while the rules didn't say you couldn't and did imply you could, they said nothing particularly useful about it.

I just have to mention that this runs counter to all my experiences in 38 years of roleplaying. We did chases without dedicated chase rules, swam through underground rivers without dedicated rules for swimming and holding your breath, threw big rocks down on enemies without any rules for how to hit them and how much damage the rock will do ... and we didn't write all of that stuff down as house-rules, we just came up with something whenever there wasn't a rule and did it like that. Of course what the ruleset offers structures how you think about your actions, but for us, in the end, it was always the fiction that determined whether something might be possible, and if it was deemed possible, we found a stat to roll on, and difficutly modifier to apply to it, and rolled.

 

[Celebrim]

I think it is more likely that people have different experiences and that your style of gaming is not the only style of gaming. Is it so anethema to think that some people have played with a light focus on the rules they use ever since this hobby started?

Whether or not that is true it is NOT a rebuttal to what I said nor does it in any way refute it. Are you claiming that I'm wrong that the core rules of 1e AD&D were spread out over the PH, DMG, and MM? Because "other people have different experiences" is so not a refutation of that that it feels like deflection.

As for your change of topic, It's not an anathema to me. I have suggested I could see how it would work in some narrow cases. But I think the general idea that we don't need big tomes of rules is short sighted. If the OP had just said, "I tend to prefer playing with 300 pages of rules", I probably wouldn't have considered that worth commenting on.

 

[overgeeked]

I think it is more likely that people have different experiences and that your style of gaming is not the only style of gaming. Is it so anethema to think that some people have played with a light focus on the rules they use ever since this hobby started?

No one is saying you can't enjoy 3000 pages of rules, people are just saying they aren't enjoying it as much.

Yeah. It's a super weird take. I vastly prefer the lighter touch on rules specifically because that's what the hobby was like back in the '80s when I started. Or at least the games I started with. Those blank places in the rules were wonderful and fantastic. Just like blank places on a map. They let us explore and discover and create. To use our own ideas and what worked for our table. Those blank spots are the draw. That's where the mystery and fun is hiding.

 

[Maggan]

What the rules are silent on, players will typically not attempt to do because they simply won't think about it or think it is possible.

Or the opposite. Not having every action codified might free up the imagination and let players act freely.

When we played a lot of D&D4, we ran into that exact situation where players would be sitting there staring at the character sheet trying to find the action that achieved a result, instead of just saying what they wanted to do.

 

[overgeeked]

I just have to mention that this runs counter to all my experiences in 38 years of roleplaying. We did chases without dedicated chase rules, swam through underground rivers without dedicated rules for swimming and holding your breath, threw big rocks down on enemies without any rules for how to hit them and how much damage the rock will do ... and we didn't write all of that stuff down as house-rules, we just came up with something whenever there wasn't a rule and did it like that. Of course what the ruleset offers structures how you think about your actions, but for us, in the end, it was always the fiction that determined whether something might be possible, and if it was deemed possible, we found a stat to roll on, and difficutly modifier to apply to it, and rolled.

Exactly the same here. We didn't need any rules for those things. We used our own creativity and rolled with it. And as a result those were the most fun, most entertaining, and most memorable bits of gaming we ever had.

 

[Maggan]

If the OP had just said, "I tend to prefer playing with 300 pages of rules", I probably wouldn't have considered that worth commenting on.

Funny that, that is how I read the OP. A personal reflection on how the user feels about the amount of rules in a game. And some questions thrown in about what other people like.

 

[overgeeked]

Or the opposite. Not having every action codified might free up the imagination and let players act freely.

Exactly so. The referee needs to know the rules, the players don't. The players just need to know what they want to do and state it clearly to the referee. The referee can take it from there. The rules are important. The rules matter. System matters. But it can, and often does, have a negative impact on player creativity. In my experience, the lighter the rules the more boundless the players' available options; the heavier the rules the more bound by the rules the players' available options. This plays into the most powerful killer feature of RPGs, tactical infinity.

When we played a lot of D&D4, we ran into that exact situation where players would be sitting there staring at the character sheet trying to find the action that achieved a result, instead of just saying what they wanted to do.

I loved just about everything about 4E as a game, but my gods did actually playing through combat suck.